


The Night They Found Him: Phil's Story

by Comixgal



Series: We're In This Together [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - BDSM, F/F, F/M, M/M, Mentions of Rape, Mentions of Violence, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 19:18:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2784683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Comixgal/pseuds/Comixgal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The team comes together to take down John Garrett and save the sub he's been keeping. Phil tries to navigate the aftermath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Night They Found Him: Phil's Story

Agent Phil Coulson was tired. He was, he’d decided, too old to be attending his high school best friend’s bonding ceremony. And so help him, he was going to scream if one more well-meaning elderly relative said anything along the lines of, “Philip! Here alone? You were such a strapping young boy. Turned into a handsome dom. Well, don’t give up hope! If Kevin can find someone, I’m sure you will too.”

There wasn’t enough alcohol in the world to make this a positive experience - especially since he was on call and couldn’t partake. He left as quickly as possible after the dessert. There was no way anyone would catch him dancing.

He was on his way home when his phone rang just before the sound of a chopper whirred in the distance. He pulled the car off the road, sent the coordinates to the Base for one of the junior agents to come get it, and waited calmly for the S.H.I.E.L.D. transport to arrive.

“We found him.” Melinda May shouted over the wind and noise.

“Garrett?” Coulson grabbed a tactical vest from a hook and checked his weapons.

“We’re going there now. You’ll get briefed on the way!”

***

Melinda touched them down at a small local airport. “Twenty miles up the road. Van’s waiting.”

Inside the truck, Coulson quickly greeted the rest of the team. Clint, Steve, and Natasha were waiting. Iron Man was flying above them. As they drove, Melinda laid out the plan.

Clint and Natasha went first, scouting the area and taking out the guards. Once the area was cleared, Iron Man swooped in closer for additional air cover while Steve, Melinda, and Phil entered the house through the front door. Clint and Natasha crept through the back.

Within fifteen minutes, they had Garrett and eleven of his cronies in handcuffs.

Coulson leaned down to put his face in front of the kneeling Garrett’s. “John. Anything else you want to tell me about? If I have to send my people around to sniff out traps, I’m going to be very displeased.”

The man gave an ugly, cruel, grin. “I’m dead anyway. What do I care about your displeasure?” He pulled back to spit in Coulson’s face but Natasha had already pushed the man’s head into the ground.

“Spread out. Look for anything we might have missed. Iron Man, do a sweep.”

“Already done.” The man’s voice came over comms. “Just about to let you know that I’ve got heat signatures in the basement. Possibly human. There’s a lot of interference”

Coulson, Clint, and Natasha were running before the static of his voice faded. Garrett had a reputation for cruelty to the subs who ended up in his care. All three of them had seen the sort of mangling that Garrett enjoyed.

“Captain, we’ll need you.” Clint said over the comms as they ran.

“On my way.”

The door to the basement had been guarded but unlocked. Natasha crept down first then signaled the all-clear.

The room was full of technology. A few ocular implants floated in gel. Boxes of Cybertek weapons sat everywhere. In the far corner was a cage. Inside was a dark-haired man, curled tightly in the too-small space. He was naked and bruised. When he heard them approach, he scrambled to the rear of the cage.

“Natasha?” Coulson asked softly. “Can you do this?” He hated to ask.

She said, “Call her,” and slowly began to switch. She seemed to shrink and pull into herself. She lost the haughty stance and Black Widow swagger. Once she no longer seemed capable of killing a man in less than three seconds, she approached the cage.

“Hi.” She whispered. “It’s okay. We won’t hurt you.”

The man tried to plaster himself against the rear bars.

Natasha remained small and unthreatening. “I promise we won’t hurt you. You can come out. I’ll open the cage.”

The sub crawled forward to get a better look at her. “Promise?”

“Promise.” Nat said again. She knelt down on the ground. “I’m going to open the door. My name’s Nat.” She looked up to see four locks keeping the cage closed.

A scared whine came from the man. Steve had come forward to help with the padlocks. “Hey buddy. Let me just take care of these locks.” He snapped them open between his strong hands.

Natasha gave Steve a grateful smile then tugged open the cage door. “What’s your name?” 

Dark eyes swept over them. Once the door was open and they’d both moved back, he said, “Ward. My name’s Grant Ward.” His voice was harsh from screaming or disuse. He started moving out of the cage when a figure approached from behind Steve and Nat. Ward thrust himself backwards.

Steve crawled forward. “It’s okay. That’s Clint. He’s my dom. He’s a good man. I promise.” Steve held out the bottle of water Clint had set down behind them.

Ward stared wide-eyed at them. “Where’s my master?”

“In custody and never getting out of prison.” A smooth voice said. “He can’t hurt you anymore.”

“That’s Coulson. He runs our team.” Nat explained. “He’s a dom too. He would never, ever lie to you.”

Ward believed her. That voice was kind. He trusted it. With faster reflexes than they had expected, he grabbed the water out of Steve’s hand. He drank it down and then crawled out of the cage, wincing and gasping at each move. When he tried to stand, his knees buckled and the blood rushed to his head. He had time to cry out in fear before he fainted.

Steve caught him, cradling the body gently against his broad chest. He turned towards Clint for direction. The archer was standing with two knives in each hand. Steve’s eyes widened.

“It’s okay, love. I just don’t like it when you have to go Personal in the field. Can you switch back to Professional?” He put away his knives after checking that Coulson was still holding his gun.

“Need help.” Steve said in a voice too small for his body.

Clint approached. “Of course.” He positioned himself behind the man, pressing against his back. He went up on his toes to whisper into his sub’s ear. “You’re such a good boy for me. You did a perfect job. I’m so proud of you. I’ll take such good care of you tonight. But first I need you to help get us home. Can you do that? Can you be my big, strong, Captain America? Grant needs your help. Coulson, Tony, Nat, and I need your help. Can you do that?”

He nodded. The only thing that changed about him was his voice. “Agent Coulson, do we have medical on their way?”

“They’ll be outside in less than a minute. Transport is already here for the prisoners, Captain.”

“Good.” Rogers strode out of the door, carrying the weight of Ward’s unconscious body with ease.

Clint followed while Coulson began an inventory of the room’s contents and kept an eye on Natasha. He knew that she wouldn’t balance-switch unless she had to for safety. The agent still didn’t understand how she went from such a strong dom-rating for Professional to such a strong sub-rating for Personal. He hoped that Darcy would arrive quickly.

His hopes were answered when both Skye and Darcy rushed in a few minutes later. They converged on Natasha. The last thing Coulson saw was bright red hair being cradled against Darcy’s substantial chest.

******

Coulson sat in medical, waiting for someone to fill him in. Dr. Simmons stepped out of the room.

“Doctor?” He asked as he stood. “How’s the patient?”

She drew herself upright and smiled gently at him. She knew that it wasn’t just his Dom Classification that would be shouting at him to care for the injured young man. “Still asleep, Agent Coulson. He is dehydrated, anemic, and underweight. Significant abrasions and contusions all over his body. Scarring along the torso and restraint points.”

Coulson nodded. He’d seen the dried blood around the man’s wrists and ankles. He realized that the woman had stopped talking, clearly hesitant to continue. “Doctor, it can’t be as bad as I’m imagining.”

She winced. “It’s bad, sir. He’s been unwillingly sodomized, his penis and scrotum have been brutalized, we’re still waiting for bloodwork to tell us what chemicals were in his system, and initial brain scans show the signs of a sub who was taken too far past his limits.”

Anger boiled hot under Coulson’s skin. He wanted to smash John Garrett’s head in. “Give me a prognosis.”

“Positive given rest, recuperation, and therapy. He’s going to need a lot of support from a strong dom working in conjunction with doctors and psychiatrists who are familiar with this type of abuse. Until he wakes up and we can do proper examinations with his input, we won’t really know all the damage. Will you be here for that?”

The man frowned. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Garrett had a military background. I’ll remind him too much of that. Besides, I’m not looking for a relationship.”

This time the frown came from Jemma, his friend and colleague, not Dr. Simmons, the genius doctor. “This isn’t about a relationship, Phil. Studies show that for abused subs, a strong dom’s presence during recovery can go a long way to making them feel more balanced. You’re a 17 with a Personal +1. You’re as close to an 18 as I’ve ever met. ”

He didn’t mention that he already knew that. “Do we have Grant’s numbers?”

She shook her head. “I’ve sent in a request to MCC for any of his previous listings, but you know how they are about privacy. We can’t do the test ourselves with all the drugs in his system and the stress from broken limits. The results would be worthless.”

The McCoy-Conners (MCC) test had been developed several decades ago for establishing baseline D/S readings. It used a series of biological markers to provide a guideline number on two different scales. The numbers were out of 9, with 5 being the perfect median.

“Personal” referred to how an individual handled authority within their intimate and, to some extent, social interactions.

The markers for “Professional” ratings had taken the McCoy-Conners duo another seven years to figure out. This number indicated an individual’s need for control or authority within the professional sphere.

The lower the number, the less authority an individual needed in their Personal or Professional life. Numbers were added together and then the higher scale was given with the numeric addition.

Phil was a 17, Personal +1, which meant that he had a rating of Personal 9, Professional 8. 

In contrast, Natasha was a 10, Professional +6. She had a Personal rating of 2 and Professional rating of 8. It was rare for anyone to have more than a 5-point swing.

The process of switching between Personal and Professional dispositions was called “balance-switching” based on the idea that a person would be happiest when their work-life balance matched their MCC numbers.

MCC totals under ten usually indicated submissive preferences while numbers over eleven indicated dominant preferences. Baseline numbers skewed one way or the other by up to a point based on an individual’s kink preferences. A complex classification system had been developed that weighted kinks like “restraint” or “service submission” more heavily than “dirty talk” or “voyeurism”; meaning that a sub with kinks that were more heavily weighted could find their rating skewing lower, while doms could find them skewing higher.

The online MCC database allowed individuals to input their baseline numbers and kinks to get a more precise rating. Printouts were available for those who wished to share their kink list with a partner. Tony Stark had once complained that MCC’s security system was more complex than any government’s he’d ever tackled. He’d never been able to get past their firewalls. His dom had not taken kindly to learning that he’d even tried such a stunt.

MCC also made it possible to submit your name and ratings to their relationship matching service; it had an 83% success rate.

Agent Coulson took a deep breath. “Doctor, please let me know if anything changes. I’d like to see any information we are sent. Let me know if I need to add my name to the request.”

Simmons shook her head. “We’ll get a faster response if it comes through the medical system. We’ve marked it URGENT-Abuse so that will get someone on it quickly.”

“Let me know.” He said again as he gathered his items and finally headed back to Stark Tower.

***

It was with no small amount of relief that the elevator went directly to his floor without stopping. He knew that Steve and Clint were two floors above him, spending quality time together. Darcy, Skye, and Natasha were a floor above that. He didn’t know what Tony was doing since Doctor Banner was still with the medical team.

“JARVIS, any messages for me?” He asked.

“No, sir.”

“Who do we still have an the outside?”

“Doctor Simmons, Doctor Banner, and Doctor Fitz are still at S.H.I.E.L.D. medical, sir. Agent May is on her way in. Miss Potts is in the building but not in her suite. At this time, she is on her way back to her office.”

“Thank you, JARVIS.”

He appreciated that JARVIS was willing and able to give him updates on his team.

A message came in.

 **Jemma** : Fitz and I could join you tonight.

He smiled at it. The two of them were switches in their Personal ratings; perfect 5s.

 **Phil Coulson** : Won’t Melinda mind?

May was a Personal 6. She was nominally in charge within their triadic relationship but rarely exerted her assertive nature outside of the bedroom. Her constant attention towards keeping them both safe seemed to fulfill the drive for dominance.

 **Jemma** : Alright, just one of us could join you. Fitz says he wouldn’t mind submitting tonight.

Coulson’s blood warmed at the thought of having the lithe body at his mercy. He knew it would go a long way towards relieving some of his stress. He switched his messages over to Fitz.

 **Phil Coulson** : Anything in particular tonight?

The response came quickly.

 **Leo Fitz** : Nothing much… daddy.

His cock was definitely paying attention now.

 **Phil Coulson** : Don’t stay out too late, young man. I don’t want to punish you.

He was smiling stupidly at the screen before realizing that he needed to eat something and shower before Fitz arrived.

**Author's Note:**

> I found myself interested in the concept of a BDSM AU for these characters and loved the concept of a rating system and database that I found here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/1330585
> 
> Also inspired by http://archiveofourown.org/series/66038


End file.
